Indian Space Research Organisation's PSLV rocket will today launch six Singaporean satellites that will help the city-state gather information on disaster monitoring and urban planning. The satellites will be launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in the spaceport of Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota at 6.00 PM today. Here are a few facts about the new satellites that the ISRO will be sending up today:

1. For the first time, the satellites will orbit around the equator and gather data that will benefit those in the equatorial region.

2. They will be put into a 550 kms circular orbit inclined at 15 degrees to the equator. Orbital inclination is the angle between the plane of an orbit and the equator.


Representational image explaining circular orbit | Source: aerospaceweb

3. The satellites will be able to produce information at a much higher frequency. That means the rate of data received will be faster than the earlier satellites.

4.They can capture images of Singapore once every 100 minutes and tracks threats in the sea and air, as well as natural disaster across the region.

5. The satellites are made by NUS, NTU and engineering- commercial company ST Electronics.

6. ISRO is using its trusted workhorse PSLV which is on its 32nd flight in 'core-alone' configuration, without the use of solid strap-on motors. The strap-on motors of all the PSLV satellites provides thrust at the first stage of the launch but they are not used for 'core-alone' models.

PSLV is one of the most reliable launch vehicles.

7. Of the six satellites, TeLEOS-1 is the primary satellite weighing 400 kgs whereas the other five satellites include two micro-satellites and three nano-satellites. TeLEOS-1 is the first Singapore commercial earth observation satellite.

8, Antrix Corporation Ltd, the commercial arm of ISRO, has provided launch services in PSLV for 51 customer satellites from 20 countries so far. This will be the 52nd satellite launch by the company.

9. The launch of six Singapore satellites will earn India 26 million euros. So far, India has earned 15 million USD and 80 million euros by launching satellites of other countries.